Vibha Krishnamurthy: A Crusader of Hope

Today am taking a little break from my travel musings and talking about someone else, just because I thank it is important. I recently came across her video, I think because someone else had shared it one Facebook. Now, Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy is a highly decorated paediatrician who has devoted her life to work for children with developmental disabilities. I might have come across her story earlier too but I did not wait to think about it as the issue was not directly affecting me. But as I watched the video, it kept disturbing me. Most of us “normal” people take our normalcy for granted. We can see, hear, speak, and express at will and choose how to live our life as we mature. But something as basic as this can be very difficult for people born with certain conditions. You can also watch the video below to hear the story n her own words.

The main issue here is that it is incredibly hard to diagnose such conditions. In case of underprivileged households, sometimes the parents never realize the conditions suffered by the children and nor do they have the resources to tackle the same. This is exactly where Vibha’s work has been path breaking. Her organization Ummeed (meaning hope) is revolutionizing the way such developmental disabilities are handled in India. Since its inception in 2001, Ummeed has made an effort to develop a model to care for such children that can help even those families that don’t have the resources to arrange expensive medical facilities for their children. Started with barely for people at a small scale, Ummeed has now grown to such a scale that it reaches out to more than 30000 children every year.

It is still a small number for a huge country like India where there can be millions of such cases and so much more remains to be done. Ummeed expects to train partner organizations and spread its wings all over the country for this purpose. While I have no expertise in this regard, I can only spread the word and hope that more and more people get to know about it. I also think that 100 Pipers is doing a good job of bringing forward the story of Vibha and for that matter of many other such people through its #TheGoodCrusaders campaign. I hope it helps them achieve more success in their respective endeavours in the future.